Pointless
by Duck Life
Summary: I may have broken my promise, but you're gone. All our promises are moot. Haggie/Jaggie. Character Death. Please R&R!
1. Prologue

**JPOV**

I hate hourglasses.

They're so vague and difficult to understand. I can't count the number of grains dripping down the way I can count the seconds ticking by on my wristwatch. Even so, I knew that Henry was running out of time. The ornate timepiece beside the Iron Maiden had much more sand in its bottom than its top. The hungry contraption creaked while Henry struggled, as if it were eager to snap its jaws shut around him.

He wasn't getting out of this one. Somehow I knew it, and I think he did, too. While Maggie examined the gears on the side of the death trap, he whispered for me to come closer. "I'm not gonna make it," he admitted, shaking his shackles in vain.

"No, Henry…" I argued, but I could tell from his resigned expression that what he said was, without a doubt, the truth. Henry Griffin never gave up unless there was nothing else he could do.

"I'm not," he said urgently, "so listen. After… after it happens, I need you to tell Maggie something." He strained against the manacles again. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the hourglass barely had any sand left in the top of it. "I need you to tell her that I love her." I stared at him, but really I wasn't so surprised. He'd always acted so differently around her- more protective, more aware. "Now run!"

"We're not leaving you," I protested. He shook his head, and it was so _weird _to see him so weak and… broken.

"I don't want you guys to see this," he said. "And Fitzgerald is coming back. You need to get out of here." I stared back at him for what felt like a long time before stepping back and taking Maggie's hand.

"Come on," I told her, backing away.

"But Henry-"

"He'll be okay," I lied. I looked back one last time to see him mouth, "Bye Jasper." I bit my lip and continued to lead Maggie away.

We weren't quite out of earshot when the Maiden clanged shut. There was an awful wet sound, and then silence. The manacles stopped jangling. He hadn't screamed. I guess he hadn't had time.

Maggie started crying. I wrapped my arm around her and kept walking. As we walked, I thought about what Henry had asked me to do, and I realized with a jolt that I might not be able to carry out his final wishes. He wanted me to tell Maggie that he loved her, but how could I do that when I felt the same way about her?


	2. Chapter 1

The ceiling of my room wasn't very interesting, but it was a relief from the hectic struggle my life had become since my cousin had died. The meaningless cracks spider-webbing out from each other and the whorls and irregularities of the plaster and paint distracted me from the fist-sized stone in my heart and the ripping feeling in my stomach. It had been a week since we'd rescued Matt and Lance and uncovered Agent Fitzgerald's true agenda, a week since Henry had been devoured by the Iron Maiden. A week since I'd made a promise I could never keep.

I had been trying to avoid Maggie, ducking into random classrooms when I saw her in the hallway and skipping lunch to sit and agonize in the library. Every time I saw her, I had to fight the urge to run towards her. I couldn't talk to her- not until I'd straightened out my priorities. Meanwhile, they were strewn across my brain like the dirty socks on my floor. Even those that hadn't been thrown out of balance were being affected; for the past week I'd been blowing off most of my homework.

There was a soft knock on the door. It wasn't Dad's brisk rapping. I recognized it. "Maggie?" I said hoarsely, sitting up. She let herself in. I could tell she'd been crying.

"Jasper, I'm sorry," she whispered, sinking onto the bed beside me. Instinctively, I put an arm around her, but recoiled immediately when I remembered what Henry had said.

"Sorry?" I said. "For what?"

"I know you've been avoiding me because it's my fault Hen- he's... d-dead, but-"

"What?" I coughed. "You think it's your fault?"

"It is!" she insisted. "If I hadn't wandered off while we were searching the theater… anyway, I just… you're completely right to blame me, but I c-can't stand losing both of you. Please-"

"Maggie," I said, putting a hand on her shoulder despite Henry's echoing words in my mind, "I don't blame you. At all. In fact, I-" _No! Wrong. Don't say it, tell her the truth. Tell her that Henry loved her._

"What?" she asked. I was looking back at the ceiling, at the thin black crevices crossing over each other and the darker patches where the paint had been applied more thickly. I was thinking of Henry, of what I owed my cousin, what I owed Maggie, but I knew that once I looked at her the spell would be broken. My gaze shifted from the ceiling to her face.

"I love you."

"Oh…" she murmured, leaning against me. After a moment, I felt a damp strand of tears run down my T-shirt, though Maggie remained silent. I just held onto her and thought about the difference between truth and greed, love and selfishness. Ridiculously, I found myself considering the implications of "bros before hoes." None of that counted if my bro was gone, did it? Or was it even worse that, despite the tragedy, I was still trying to get what I wanted?


	3. Chapter 2

Henry's funeral. I'd been dreading this day since I heard the scrape of the Maiden as it crashed towards him. To be accurate, I suppose I'd been dreading this day since he came to America. We're always afraid to be hurtling towards the day of a friend or family member's funeral, because funerals meant death. They were supposed to mean closure, but they didn't. Death and bleakness. It should be in the brochures.

Someone convinced me to give his eulogy. I really don't know what I'm going to say. I asked Dad, and he told me to just talk about the kind of person Henry had been. I'd known him well. _He was the best. Loyal, kind, trustworthy. The sort of guy who would give up everything for someone he cared about. _In other words, the complete opposite of me.

I spent almost an hour this morning just staring at the suit hanging in my closet, contemplating running away instead of changing into it. Eventually I decided that it wouldn't help anything to run away. All those heroes in kids' books, all the rebellious children in cheesy movies, they had an away to run to. Away is a mythical place where nothing bad exists and people can live in peace and everything is wonderful. How can I possibly go there if the horror is in my own mind? I've become the monster under the bed.

* * *

"Henry Griffin was my cousin," I said, gripping the sides of the podium as if I could absorb their solidity and use it to disguise my wavering voice, "and my best friend."

Maggie was sitting in the front row, watching me intently. Her eyes were shining, but I guessed that it was a trick of the lights. She'd told me years ago that she didn't cry at funerals. It had been her mother's. I'd had an arm around her, supporting her, because she'd been shaking and stumbling on the way there. At one point she started hyperventilating, gasping and choking as the truth hit her for the fourth time that day. But she hadn't shed a tear. "Crying is for when you're sad," she had explained, setting her shoulders back, "not for when you miss someone. And tears won't bring her back."

"I used to get annoyed with him- he was constantly going off into… escapades- but I can't think of anyone else who has impacted my life more." I had it all written down on a piece of paper: scrawled, rather generic things I'd thought up on the drive here, but suddenly the part of me that wasn't evil jutted forward. I knew what I had to say. "The night Henry died," I began, feeling the truth slip out of my mouth, "he told me… that…" I swallowed, glancing up. Maggie was watching me, concern in her eyes replacing what I'd earlier mistaken for tears. A worn-out mantra of truth versus emotion blared through my mind like one of those irritating jingles that everyone always gets stuck in their heads. "That he never regretted… coming to DC." Emotion won. Evil won.

I ran then, but never reached the utopia of away. I went home.


	4. Chapter 3

It was that night after the funeral. That might be the worst night of my life, but it wasn't because I was sad. It was sadness that made my eighth Christmas the second worst night of my life, that snowy cold evening when Mom left, and it was sadness that made my third worst night the time both of my paternal grandparents died in a car accident. This night was the worst night of my life because I was happy.

"What's going on with you?" asked Maggie. She sounded like she was trying to hold back her anger that I was not responding to be comforting. She'd gone back to my house with Dad when Henry's funeral was over.

"This whole thing," I said, gesturing upward as if it was the whole world that irked me, which some days it felt like that. "My best friend is dead." I kept saying that in the hopes that it would eventually become nothing but white noise, but it wasn't working. Every time I remembered it just hurt more. "Just acting like anything can actually stay the same is... I can't do it. It's too hard."

"You want me to make it easier for you?" she snapped. Her tone was so furious that I never saw what was coming next. Actually, for a second I thought she was going to slap me. I deserved it. Instead, she leaned in and kissed me, just like I'd been fantasizing about since I was thirteen.

That's when he started showing up. _'Sup, cuz? _Henry was leaning back in his hammock (why hasn't anybody taken that thing down yet?), watching us as if he were merely curious. He was wearing that orange striped shirt of his and his filthy shoes were propped up against the old racecar bed. I didn't bother telling him to take his shoes off though; ethereal dirt tends to not stain.

I knew right away that it wasn't really him, and also that I wasn't insane. I'd seen enough corny movies and soap operas to realize what was going on. He wasn't a ghost, he was just one of those illusions that people imagine out of guilt or unresolved issues. He was essentially my conscious, but personified.

But just knowing what he was wasn't enough to make him go away. I had to send Maggie home, but not without the promise that I would call her tomorrow morning. Maybe she wanted to go out for coffee or something. I keep thinking that I'm the worst person in the world, and even though logically I know that can't be true, given that I've never murdered or terrorized anyone, but I still feel like it. Illusion Henry stayed on his hammock for the rest of the night. He didn't talk, and I didn't try to make him talk. He just sat there quietly, surprising me a little every time I happened to glance over and realize that he was still there.

And apparently Maggie and me are kind of a thing now, I guess. These are beyond ordinary circumstances. I would give anything to go back to ordinary circumstances, even if it meant that nothing that's happened between me and Maggie in the past twenty-four hours occurred.

He's got to be rolling over in his freshly dug grave.

**A/N: Like the Facebook page for the DVD Release of Unnatural History, Season One!**

http: / / www. facebook. com / pages / DVD-Release-of-Unnatural-History-Season-One /183490668333917 # ! / pages / DVD-Release-of-Unnatural-History-Season-One / 183490668333917

(without spaces).


	5. Chapter 4

That was the week I turned into a zombie. I just followed Maggie around, who seemed to be using whatever was going on between us as a way of not thinking about Henry's death and was painfully happy all the time, and Ghost/Illusion/Mirage Henry just followed me around. He talked, but he never said anything new. He just quoted his living self, so I was being trailed by a nonexistent memory spieling off a Henry Griffin Best-Of reel.

Maggie and I had gone back to school on Monday, and somehow it seemed like the fact that we were dating was more popular gossip than what had happened to Henry. I was standing at my open locker, trying to remember what class I had next, when Katya Cattleman walked up to me and Maggie (and, of course, Fake Henry.) "So you two are going out now?" she asked, a hand on her hip. She sounded furious.

"Yeah," said Maggie, her lips pursed.

"We're not sneaking into his house," said Henry. "We're sneaking into his _green_house." I ignored his random comment and leaned forward, closer to Katya. Up close, it was easier to tell that her heavy mascara on her right eye was smudged toward her high cheekbone. Her breath smelled like cola.

"Katya, just leave us alone," I whispered, wondering if the rage was going to make itself evident and burst out of me in some rant of fury. It didn't. Against all odds, I stayed calm.

"So this is what happens?" she said, somehow seeming suddenly evil. Her lip curled maliciously. "One of you gets knocked off and all of a sudden the other two hook up?"

Everyone says they don't know what came over them when they do something rash and bellicose. I knew exactly what came over me. It was Maggie acting like everything was easy between us, it was Dad forgetting that he didn't need to pull out three cereal bowls in the morning, it was the mirage in the corner of my eye chirping, "My voice isn't that high!" It was every student at Smithson wandering around and looking at me and Maggie as if the fact that we were together made up for the fact that we were minus one.

I shoved her up against the lockers and, even though I had an unspoken oath to never hit a girl (what guy doesn't?) I smacked her in the face with as much power as I had. Behind me, I heard Maggie gasping. Somebody down the hall yelled for us to break it up, and somebody else started yelling for a fight. (I think the second guy ended up getting more followers.)

Katya didn't cry, and she didn't slap me back. She just stared at me, almost out of pity, and I think I saw something click in her dark eyes. She didn't look vicious anymore. I stepped back and let her walk away before turning to Maggie, who looked horrified. The monster in me had finally appeared. I finally let my guard down in front of the one person I cared more about than anyone in the world. Except she still didn't know the worst of it.

"I have to tell you something," I said quietly, shutting my locker and taking her hand. We walked away from the gathering crowd, Henry walking behind me.

"I can't split up a good team," he said.


	6. Chapter 5

Sometimes I wonder if Imaginary Henry's being there made the process of telling Maggie the truth easier or more difficult. It felt awful to reveal my betrayal with him watching, which made me feel like it would have been easier to tell Maggie without his presence. On the other hand, there was always the possibility that without the guilt that radiated from his ghostly form, I would have just continued the lie. I was pretty much locked into a contract to tell her the whole truth with him in the room, occasionally murmuring things like, "Now this is dopey."

I led Maggie to an empty classroom and slipped in, shutting the door quietly behind us. "I'm a terrible person," I admitted, turning to face her.

"I think you're alright," she said, shrugging. I winced.

"Bull's eye," said Henry.

"Look," I said. It was unnecessary; she was already looking at me. I guessed that she couldn't see through me, to the depths of the disgusting, lying soul that I am. Maggie was a genius, but she didn't have X-ray vision. "The night Henry died… when he knew he wasn't going to make it…" The words were hard to say, not only because I had hidden them for so long but because I was reliving that awful night. "He told me something."

She just stood there, waiting patiently for me to tell her the something. Waiting patiently for me to ruin the façade, to reveal just how selfish I really was. Maybe it was better that I did it out of love, but maybe that only made it worse.

"That's who you killed for money," said the ghost.

"He was in love with you!" I blurted, yelling. I wondered if anyone in the hall had heard. Maggie looked shocked. "Henry… told me that he was in love with you." I expected her to gasp in surprise, or slap me, or both, but she just stood there with a calm, almost blank expression on her face.

"Oh." Anticlimactic, yes, but at least she didn't seem too angry.

"I am so sorry," I said. "I should have told you sooner. I hate myself for lying to you."

"Don't," she said, putting a hand on my shoulder. "I understand." She kissed me and took my hand, leading me out of the room. Like she really did understand. Like she was ready for both of us to move past this.

And I wanted to. I really, really did, and I thought we could. I saw it all flash before me then: prom, graduation, Yale, all with her at my side. I saw our wedding, our kids, one of them named after Henry. I saw a world where we could live on in his memory, rather than against it.

But that all evaporated in a second, because he was still there, whatever he was: memory, illusion, or hallucination. He was still there, following me, and he would always be there. "No, Jasper," he said. "You did. Thanks."


	7. Chapter 6

I've always needed to feel like I'm a good person. I always needed that reassurance, that reminder that at the end of the day, I was making the right choice. I looked at my good grades for that, at Dad's affection, at the way the kids at school (the ones that weren't just looking for a nerd to pummel) treated me. I needed to remember that I wasn't a bad person, because if I didn't have that I just felt guilty whenever I did something wrong, like littering or laughing at a mean comment.

But now I was stealing a ghost's girlfriend. It sounded like one of those dumb fantasy soap operas, only I knew that Henry was only in my head. I also knew that he was never going to leave.

I started to text Maggie before I left the house, to let her know that I was sorry for everything and that she was an amazing human being and deserved a happy ending, but I stopped before I sent it. How could I justify or even attempt to explain what I was about to do in a text? It was asinine, ridiculous, as if my apologies and my lamenting were worth nothing more than a few swipes of my thumb and some abbreviations. LOL. I tossed the phone back onto the counter- I wouldn't need it- and shut the front door quietly so as not to wake Dad.

While I was stepping up into the Iron Maiden, I thought about guilt, about truth, about love or whatever it was that was floating tenuously between me and Maggie. Ghost Henry stood a few feet away and watched me silently as I jerked on the lever and settled my spine against the cold metal of the contraption. I couldn't tell if he felt anything staring upon me in my darkest hour. Sure, he was just a reflection of my inner shame, but I at least thought that he might have some comment, even if it were just a rerun of the strange things that had come out of his mouth when he was alive. I wondered if the ghost judged me, if he was glad I was making this choice.

And then, somewhere within the last minute of my life, he disappeared. I scanned the DOUM rooms, but my hallucination was nowhere to be found. Finally peace and quiet. As the seconds ticked by, I started to wonder about my decision. Somewhere deep within me, I knew this was wrong. I knew that I wasn't really at fault for Henry's death, and I knew that he would have wanted me to be with Maggie. I knew that I was completely in the right when I kissed her. I knew that I wasn't responsible for anything that had happened to either of them.

But I also knew that the guilt, the agonizing paranoia that tore apart my brain and my gut, the feeling that I was always going to be living with this tragedy, that I was never going to feel light again, that it would always be a weighted stone in my chest, slowly seeping through my bones and turning me into a statue, that was never going to leave me. Even if it wasn't justified, it was there and always would be. As the spikes swung towards me, I felt a bit saddened that there was nobody there to tell Maggie that _I _loved her. I guess that's okay. I probably didn't deserve it anyway.

* * *

**A/N: Well, that was tragic. But hey, that's the genre.**

**Don't forget to like the Facebook page for the DVD Release of Unnatural History, Season One!**

**http: / / www. facebook. com / pages / DVD-Release-of-Unnatural-History-Season-One /183490668333917 # ! / pages / DVD-Release-of-Unnatural-History-Season-One / 183490668333917**

**(without spaces)**


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